Please Remove/Limit Premades Parties in Frontlines (or nerf DRK/WAR)

while grinding out the current series i have had the unfortunately experience of encountering the same copy/paste premade over and over in pvp
composed of several people who are clearly sitting in a discord call together, the premades always have a dark knight, warrior, a healer, and usually a dps or two
this is absolutely miserable to play against
why?
it goes like this:

the dark knight uses plunge to jump into a group, salted earth to draw everyone in, then follow up by rampage to deal aoe damage and increase everyones damage taken
the warrior, immediately after salted earth goes off, uses primal rend, dealing extra aoe damage and stunning everyone, doing its massive damage follow-up (primal ruination) and then probably also uses rampage
if people are still alive, which they often arent, the dps, warrior, and dark knight then all spam random stuff, usually aoes, to kill everyone thats left
the healer (almost always a white mage or astrologian), meanwhile, makes killing anyone extremely hard without a highly coordinated effort
as a result, these people instantly kill a group of people with little to zero chance for them to fight back, allowing the premade to farm battle high v almost as soon as the game has begun, such as in the game i was just in where not even a minute went by before "Battle High V has overtaken a member of the Order of the Twin Adder!" got spammed in chat

roughly 70% of games ive done while going from series level 5 to 21 has had a premade team doing this
its the same thing
every
single
time
its just not fun to play against, its almost impossible to play against even, its just a free win button since the points you get from kills, especially once these people get battle high v, highly outweigh the points for objectives
it turns any map into team death match, it completely makes the map objectives irrelevant, and it makes it almost pointless to even try and play unless someone on your team, or another team, has that same premade setup to help kill the other one
ive already seen a handful of people citing this as a reason they wont play frontline, which, seeing as the gamemode requires 72 people to queue for it to even pop, isnt exactly surprising to hear as the queues get longer and longer

i have only three solutions in mind
either remove the ability to queue into frontline with a party (which sucks but it is a solution) or limit such queues to only parties of 2 to try and lower the severity of this premade pubstomp
nerf dark knight (probably by removing the draw-in effect of salted earth or HEAVILY nerfing the draw-ins range) and/or warrior (lower the stuns duration to 1 second or remove it all together)
remove rampage, add in a different role skill (warrior aoe damage with rampage added was already seen by some people as too much, but now with this premade format its just causing issues like this ontop of all that)

anyways, sorry for for complaining so much, i dont want to be a whiner, and i definitely have a skill issue to a degree (im just an okay pvp player at best), but theres not really anything i can do as a solo-queueing bard aside from beg a team of 24 uncoordinated people to try and focus on the 2-5 people sitting in a discord call farming battle high v
i doubt anything will come of this, but i had to at least try to say something
i want to enjoy frontline, ive always been the odd one out amongst friends saying frontline was more fun than CC, but now with this kind of stuff constantly happening its just.. miserable, its not fun, it makes me and others not want to play pvp at all and just pick up the series things when it goes in the rewards shop 2-3 years from now

Nah. There have been enough threads about this nonsense so I'll keep it quick and we can hopefully move on quickly.

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Originally Posted by Inue

makes killing anyone extremely hard without a highly coordinated effort

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That's the point of this entire game's philosophy.

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Originally Posted by Inue

its just a free win button since the points you get from kills, especially once these people get battle high v, highly outweigh the points for objectives

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It's "free" because 8 out of 10 people queuing for Frontlines don't give a shit about being there and will feed if it makes their series pass/EXP go faster. So why aren't we having that conversation instead?

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Originally Posted by Inue

not really anything i can do as a solo-queueing bard aside from beg a team of 24 uncoordinated people to try and focus on the 2-5 people sitting in a discord call farming battle high v

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Like this, you feel you have to beg people to actually play the game, and yet people coordinating is the problem? Ok.

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Originally Posted by Inue

it makes me and others not want to play pvp at all and just pick up the series things when it goes in the rewards shop 2-3 years from now

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If that's peoples' only motivation for queuing up to begin with, then it's really hard for me to take these cries seriously. Literally making my point.

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Originally Posted by Inue

i want to enjoy frontline, ive always been the odd one out amongst friends saying frontline was more fun than CC, but now with this kind of stuff constantly happening its just.. miserable, its not fun

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I'm sorry you're not having fun, but yours isn't the only way of playing. Not all people who group up are meta chasers and not everyone's trying to ruin the experience. Taking away their fun for yours ain't it. I'd rather address lethargic play in games and create systems to motivate players to actually try. Then your apparent pubstomp groups won't be any bit as noticeable in this 9 button PvP game.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pre-mades. Regardless of any other issues, its wild to me that people want to remove a feature that allows up to 4-friends to queue together, or make out that it is bad to do so, in a mmo. And no, I would put leechers and AFKers far FAR ahead of any kind of pre-mades. I've seen pre-mades get beat by alliances banding together and actually using some knowledge and skill to counter them. Feeders and AFKers? If you have too many on your alliance, there is nothing you can do. I would rather deal with pre-mades than that other group of players.

I've made a couple of responses to similar posts such as these over the last week or so. Once again I'm moved to posit that your agency as a single player is not to be underestimated. Another hallmark seems to be the admission, albeit humble in some respects, that they're "not very good". Yet often times this coincides with an effort level ceiling that prevents them from ever trying to prove that wrong, cuz "I'm just doing it for xp/series/whatever". To say it's "impossible to counter" is claiming striking dummy status. That's simply not the case and you're doing yourself a massive disservice as a person. It might be that you just don't like the content enough, in which case the decision on what to do is obvious, at least imo.

Otherwise? Maybe review just what jobs kits are like (right down to their cd timers), what universal kits offer beyond the instantaneous benefit (e.g. pre-purifying). Maybe consider not playing BRD if you're not particularly attached to it. You could go SAM for that constant scare factor, or MNK to jump their DRK once they motion to commit (or force their healer away). A lot of the time it's a lack of melee presence that makes things unnecessarily awkward. You could also go WHM for their stupidly long range stunning LB or kappa/pig anyone significant that's close enough. Things like that you know? You can do this as a lone unit and have an impact if you just pick a really good time to do it and they aren't expecting a reaction. Complacency is often a glaring weakness of theirs.

Personally I'm not queuing as much these days because I'm quite sick of being plonked into the team where it feels like I'm the only one that wants to be there for combat, once too many times in a row. Secondly, attitudes encountered in general.

Agreed with OP. I made a thread on this topic a few months back.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ontline-please

Asking other things I argued for premades to be matched only against other premades. The only people who oppose this solution are players who are themselves members of such toxic premades. They rally against any discussion that would change the status quo because they only play FL so they can explicitly stomp other players. They're not interested in balance, sportsmanship or the enjoyment of other players.

So, be prepared to deal with a lot of bad faith arguments and time wasters if you want to discuss solutions to the premade problem.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

The only people who oppose this solution are players who are themselves members of such toxic premades.

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Originally Posted by Exmo

So, be prepared to deal with a lot of bad faith arguments and time wasters if you want to discuss solutions to the premade problem.

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The comedy writes itself.

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Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

I've made a couple of responses to similar posts such as these over the last week or so. Once again I'm moved to posit that your agency as a single player is not to be underestimated. Another hallmark seems to be the admission, albeit humble in some respects, that they're "not very good". Yet often times this coincides with an effort level ceiling that prevents them from ever trying to prove that wrong, cuz "I'm just doing it for xp/series/whatever". To say it's "impossible to counter" is claiming striking dummy status. That's simply not the case and you're doing yourself a massive disservice as a person. It might be that you just don't like the content enough, in which case the decision on what to do is obvious, at least imo.

Otherwise? Maybe review just what jobs kits are like (right down to their cd timers), what universal kits offer beyond the instantaneous benefit (e.g. pre-purifying). Maybe consider not playing BRD if you're not particularly attached to it. You could go SAM for that constant scare factor, or MNK to jump their DRK once they motion to commit (or force their healer away). A lot of the time it's a lack of melee presence that makes things unnecessarily awkward. You could also go WHM for their stupidly long range stunning LB or kappa/pig anyone significant that's close enough. Things like that you know? You can do this as a lone unit and have an impact if you just pick a really good time to do it and they aren't expecting a reaction. Complacency is often a glaring weakness of theirs.

Personally I'm not queuing as much these days because I'm quite sick of being plonked into the team where it feels like I'm the only one that wants to be there for combat, once too many times in a row. Secondly, attitudes encountered in general.

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Agree with all of this (especially the comment about being dropped into a team surrounded by people who don't want to engage in actual pvp, part of why I'm losing interest too, along with RDM changes, Secure etc etc etc).
See a DRK about to dive in? WHM LB and stun them. No LB up? Kappa them as they land or kappa the RPR/DNC/AST. But that requires effort and looking at who is coming towards you and making some decisions around who you should target and what ability you yourself have, that you should use. Or, you know, not standing there like stuffed ducks, while an enemy team runs straight at you.
Too many players look at premades and throw their hands up and go "it's impossible". BS

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd, and if I've got the premade on my side instead, I know they've got the match on lock and I could spam the 1-button for all the difference it'll make to the outcome

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This mindset is absolutely wack and self-defeating, any job solo queue can make a huge difference in the outcome of a match. If you see a strong group on the enemy team and you're not confident in being able to shut it down on your current job, you can always swap to monk or reaper and force them to play around you. Hell, even picking a tank and gapclosing to their backlines every time the drk dives in tends to split firepower enough to nullify pulls. Instead of complaining about premades every post, learn to screw with them.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd, and if I've got the premade on my side instead, I know they've got the match on lock and I could spam the 1-button for all the difference it'll make to the outcome. I've been in over a 1,000 matches and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a premade lose, and each time it seemed like a complete fluke rather than anything that could be considered skill on the part of the other two teams. (Node spawns be wily like that.)

The irony is that premades are the first ones to complain about "lethargy" and yet never stop to consider WHY such a large number of people just don't bother to try once a 4-man stack (or god forbid an 8-man one) takes the field and starts mopping up, or why it's utterly BAFFLING that when the suggestion is made to give them their own queue where they can fight the toughest and most skilled players among themselves they refuse such a gesture.

Either they're a bunch of hardcore players who should be fighting their own kind while leaving the chaff behind, or they actually enjoy slaughtering low-skill players and would hate to be forced into doing otherwise.

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You know every time there's a group of 4 on your team or against you? And there's no possibility it could be anything else? And that all of their winrates are what, 90%? And that assumption effectively causes you to start soft throwing?

https://media1.tenor.com/m/cg1qeOdO7iIAAAAd/skull.gif

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd

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You don't actually need to try and hard counter the enemy team alone, you know. Anything to break up their formation will help your team.

Dropping a Comet in the midst of the enemy team would force them to scatter and desync burst. Firing a MCH LB at the RPR might force them to instinctively Guard, which desyncs them from the rest of the burst. Diving in on a tank and then splitting off from your group would very likely split off half their team to chase you down, reducing their firepower.

Basically anything you can do to delay the enemy burst helps your team out, the only problem then would be on whether or not your team has the awareness to not die, which is something no one but themselves can help with.

Do you know purify works against draw in now? And since you arr just farming series xp, you can just do roulette everyday, And you will reach level 25 without too much trouble

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap. If I'm up against a premade, I've got nothing that's going to counter that and it's just a matter of trying to not end up in 3rd, and if I've got the premade on my side instead, I know they've got the match on lock and I could spam the 1-button for all the difference it'll make to the outcome.

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Your own attitude is contributing to the outcome. As others have said, you can disrupt premades but it takes effort. Don't just throw your hands up. This attitude and the feeders and AFKers are what gets me in matches.

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Originally Posted by Eastwall

Do you know purify works against draw in now? And since you arr just farming series xp, you can just do roulette everyday, And you will reach level 25 without too much trouble

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He probably didn’t realize you can pre cast Purify now to neutralize DRK drawn in or Warrior pull
Kinda pathetic to see him still scapegoating DRK and premade and never face his own issue

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

snip cuz character limit on this post

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MCH main right? Well, I admit things are more hands-tied in terms of what you can do as that job, but you do have a snipe that's in the strongest state it's been so far. Gets pretty silly when you're on a cap point in Secure with Bravery in tow, and Chainsaw on top if the target's any closer. Really silly stuff. In less niche instances well... sniping a DRK as they tromp in with possible LB is not a good pick unless you spot the moment they're held down by an unpurgeable cc. You could fire a warning shot at any of their backline cheerleaders though, as heavy damage taken in an instant tends to give most anyone the willies, causing them to fold early.

So all in all, it's still something. Just a matter of timing. I know there's plenty of MCHs that'll send out an LB on just about anything, and naturally you don't want to be one of those. When the target is a currently overwhelmed BRD and it's on 10% when they LB. Yeah. One of those. Nah. You probably know all that though.

Apart from a couple of ranged jobs, melee tend to carry abilities that are far more impactful. As a melee main, I'm almost always seeing options in my approach, and ways to disrupt bothersome groups. That's whether they be of the padding, headhunting or plain tryharding ilk. On the flipside, when I'm just too tired to focus I'll hop on a ranged when I don't care to win/lose and just want to get my roulette done in a hurry (a rare thing normally.)

Anyway, all this is to say that the ambient cohesion of randos can trump an alliance with premades. It absolutely does happen. I can attest to it, others are attesting to it. It's not that rare if that alliance you're in is even slightly willing to bare fangs. The only other stumbling blocks that come to mind is a of lack of amenability to trust enough, and also a misunderstanding of what personal survival thresholds actually are going from situation to situation, that hold some of the more eager but casual combatants back. (Think apprehensive shiffle-shuffles, treating their health bar as if it'll only take one hit to die to anything.)

One last one I suppose, but composure check. That's always there, which wraps around back into being an attitude issue I guess. Make no mistake I'm not trying to dismiss or trivialize your frustrations, a lot of the conduct can get into eye-rolly stuff but... the doom and gloom surrounding this matter is honestly overstated.

Btw, Dynamis? Is Dynamis any different from the other US DCs? That's actually the one place I haven't rolled up on, so just wondering.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why people intentionally queue for a team-based game mode and then complain that people are... working together as a team. :confused:

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why people intentionally queue for a team-based game mode and then complain that people are... working together as a team. :confused:

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It’d sure be nice if people played as a team. hard enough to get people on useful jobs and even harder for them to not squander their kit.

It’s funny how OP is competent enough to understand how teamwork and job specialization works, but not enough to use it themselves.

You’re all doing the same thing in PvE. You press all your big buttons at the same time as everyone else and you dodge the yellow circles on the ground. The only difference with PvP is that they don’t line up your CDs for you and the Yellow circles look like Salted Earth.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

<so so going over the character limit with this one>

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Okay lemme try to pick through this via the screenshots. It's tough though, given we're not seeing the top values of every section. But yeah I'll try.

First one the AST may be in a premade, but without seeing the whole board it's hard to make a proper assessment. Apart from... that's a bot match. Your side likely didn't even have to do much apart from touch tomeliths, and I'm guessing engaged in a little gratuitous spawn-camping vs red. That doesn't look like players unable to do stuff so much as players unwilling to do stuff. You claim newbies though, so there's a slim avenue for a benefit of the doubt.

Second screenshot I have no idea what the deal is with those turnouts so I'm skipping that. That would've been a "???" match in my books. Not much of anything going on there and one premade playing yeah. Very "???" match. "I just want my xp" on a grand scale, a match I'd half want to dip from rather than play to its end, ngl.

Third one is a little unclear, as it's organized by KOs yet you had the highest there. There's a hyperpadder on yellow and yet the only other player with a notable turnout there that's on your side is a SMN. I can't spot the premade in this one. The context you give for this screenshot is common. Just the other two sides genuinely falling asleep and realizing where they're at too late. Slight logistics error really. Now, you can have that one vocal person shriek "SMALLS" that's not part of any premade and get people moving to them 'cuz "PVE BOIZ!!!" I don't know if that's what happened, but you don't really need a premade to do that at that point. Have seen full rando alliances achieve that.

Last screenshot I can see there was a premade, yeah, but also the scores are very tight. 28 and 55 points behind the prevailing team. Was the premade really that much of a cornerstone behind that result? Looks like it could've gone either way, even when the blues appear to be crystal-humpers, again, going by what can be seen there. Probably came down to blues not drawing arms when they needed to but that's... such a small fraction of the match. That's all I can guesstimate though without having been there. Solo units getting it together could've swayed that. It wasn't to do with big crystals there so I'd think someone trying to killsteal off whoever they were attacking would've at least stalled their efforts and maybe even scuppered their win, so that was a missed opportunity (unless your side was the one feeding at a dumb time).

So we have one example of how close things can be regardless of premades or not, and two good examples of when people play like badly programmed bots because xp/whatever (probably) and/or the mental fortitude of jello. So the story those screenshots have to tell, like so much interpretive art, is:

• That the randos playing or not playing are what decided the matches way more than the premade's participation. It helped but it's not absolute. Sometimes it's better to peer into the negative space of a picture to see greater meaning.

• Consistently making good decisions as a solo unit can add or subtract those points that really matter in closer matches. More or less the same number of people as a premade.

• Finally, yes there are indeed some matches that are totally unsalvageable, but that's less to do with ability than it is motivation. Most of the time, I'd like to think. This is not a hard game to play (just imo).

If that's still your opinion then fair enough. It doesn't sound like you're having a great time, so taking time away is likely the right call. For the time being anyhow.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why people intentionally queue for a team-based game mode and then complain that people are... working together as a team. :confused:

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I don’t think it's a case of people complaining about other people working as a team, you can see in these types of threads that people who hate premades generally also complain about their own team not coordinating.

So now we come to the bizarre part which is that premades apparently have too much coordination. I guess only a certain level of coordination is acceptable and anything above is apparently ruining the mode.

My problem with premades is that they're using tools that turn the system into something fundamentally unfun. I'm not expecting anything else from a non balanced mode like FL however. I don't have a problem playing with people playing in teams, nor I do have any problem teaming up to play with people in a team based game.
What Olivia said above is pretty telling on its own, "It's like pve", and that's where my problem lies.
It's not the premades that should be blamed, it's the devs.

Frontlines is far, far too big to ever balance anything around it, to be honest.

At least under the current design.. That being said, I will stand by that Frontline should be 8v8v8 and not 24v24v24

The people complaining about premades are the same ones who play ranged DPS, sit back and pew pew and BH hug thinking they're so good when really they're piggy backing off their tanks. They don't want to coordinate, they want to sit back and pew pew and feel good about themselves and they can't do that when their team and the other teams don't cooperate.

It's a mode that they openly cater to PVE'ers in, this is by design. Both with maps and the daily bonus. They don't care about you wanting to get dubs, they care that they have enough people playing that they can use it as content for the player base, as mindless as it is. That's all zerg PVP has ever been and ever will be. Premades, no premades, it doesn't change the nature of the mode.

Having a bit of coordination is better than none. In fact, it makes a huge difference. I'm mostly solo in duty finder, and in some games it's easier for me to understand what the opponent teams are doing at start than my own.

I end up having to change mindset midgame to accommodate. Stay out of the big fur ball, Southern Cross, Resolution and Phantom Dart on the enemy DRKs have saved the engagements a number of times. As unpopular as it is to some pvpers, the battle high changes allow easier comebacks even with early wipes.

Skill issue, you're new to pvp, git gud. Don't know what else to say, you're talking and complaining about things you're clueless about OP.

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Originally Posted by Teno

Skill issue, you're new to pvp, git gud. Don't know what else to say, you're talking and complaining about things you're clueless about OP.

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New people don't come to forum to complain because they are still in learning phase.
The problem with these people is that they are not new, just people who lack ability to adopt to changes and poor ability to react to interactive situation
They only know one style and one style only.
I also do noticed these people tends to play on range jobs and this patch is really making their frontline experience miserable because they can't no longer tap to BH and steal kill at ease
Melee now has a hard finisher to avoid range to kill steal in this patch
They need to adopt to new changes or just in forever perused of next scapegoat they can blame on
Takes OP for example, he is still trying to scapegoating DRK and WAR when there is a change to Purity he is not aware of

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Originally Posted by Teno

Skill issue, you're new to pvp, git gud. Don't know what else to say, you're talking and complaining about things you're clueless about OP.

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I wouldn’t really call them clueless, they seem to have a decent grasp of how burst works, which is more than 90% of NA

Whether people complain and they can't adapt or don't want to adapt, or whether they complain because everybody keels over because casuals can't deal with this, I don't know. Either way, the result remains: this kind of tactics just decimates whole alliances and it's problematic for the mode.

Premades are just a convenient scapegoat. SE made it worse by adding comet, rampage, etc in the recent FL "rework" of all things, and I can't fathom why they'd do this. It's almost like they think the fact that every casual will want to have fun casting a nuke with a telegraph warrants the obvious abuses it will bring into the kitchen sink strats. If anybody remember the infamous archon toilet in starcraft 2, then this is exactly what this feels like to me. FL at a more tryhard level has literally turned into pulling everybody into a blackhole in order to dump as many AoEs as possible on top.

I'm not sure to see the point of such a design direction personally.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Nah, my sole contribution doesn't mean crap.

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I always take it as "challenge accepted." Contend the flanks, silence people with low hp, punish people who over extend, use the third team to steal kills or get assists. I'll admit there are games where my own team don't seem to even bother but I refuse to be part of the problem.


Just make sure to properly judge your own team's temperament and capabilities. All of this is effective even if you have no battle high.

I wouldn't mind seeing a salted earth nerf and a warrior survivability nerf. I personally felt that the delayed animation version of salted earth was perfectly playable for skilled dark knight players, and reduced salted earth efficacy can be compensated by buffing job damage or survivability. I found frontline a bit more fun when the skill floor required to delete teams with salted was higher.

I don't find the role actions problematic personally. They might increase the skill gap between regular players and casual players, but they are not singularly focused around grouped aoe burst. Phantom dart, smite, and eagle eye shot are very strong single target options that are impactful in the majority of matches.

Rampage is literally focused around grouped AoE burst. Comet as well.
One can have single target options for other players to have fun with, and they may be very good, but they don't feed into the kitchen sink meta that's been plaguing the mode since forever.
Rampage/Comet/etc would work perfectly fine without those strats, but in combination with them, they're just crazy.